17" Powerbook: keyboard/touchpad no response

B

bd5150

Registered
Hi,
After installing 10.3.8, my 17" 1 ghz PB started having some odd problems. Installing 10.3.8 may have been a coincidence though, I'm not sure. If I close my powerbook to put it to sleep and then unplug the AC power cord, the next time I open it up the keyboard and touchpad don't respond. I thought it was freezing until I plugged in a mouse, checked the System Preferences and my Touchpad wasn't even present in the Keyboard & Mouse Preferences. It was missing altogether from the menu choices. I was hoping to find someone else with the issue but am feeling more and more isolated lately =) Has anyone experienced a similar issue with their PB or heard of this in the past.

My thoughts are either that it's a weird OS issue or else I've got a weakened circuit running to my keyboard/trackpad. And I've already re-installed 10.3.8 using the combo updater instead of the Software Updater version. Any other suggestions or possibilities? Thanks.
 
hey bd5150 - yeah, my 17" pb has done the same thing a few times.

I've run a fsck, cleaned all the system cache, optimized with onyx, repaired permissions... so far so good.

But things seem to get goofy when I plug/unplug my usb stuff...so who knows.

anyone else seeing this? doesn't sound isolated now! (c'mon tiger!)
 
Thanks for verifying I don't have a lemon Quiksan! The last thing I want to do is send my laptop in for repair and go without for 2 weeks! The horror...

I've run Cocktail and MacSweeper to make sure my system is running smoothly and I suppose my next stop would be to zap my PRAM. It just seems odd the Touchpad goes missing altogether from System Preferences after waking the powerbook back up. I suppose I could create a new user to see if the problem still happens with a fresh account? Or I could win the lottery and just replace it with a new one. Let's call that "Option B". :D
 
Should "Option B" move forward, don't forget who confirmed your bug. :D

But you said plugging in an external mouse would be recognized? I'd not tried that. I'll remember that should it happen again.
I heard rumor that 10.3.9 was seeded, so maybe they're gonna fix this issue...
 
Yeah, I thought I was experiencing a total OS freeze ala OS 9. Then I plugged in my Kensington USB mouse to find it was only the keyboard and touchpad not responding. Yeah, only. Who needs the keyboard anyways? What really had me concerned though was the Touchpad option missing altogether from the Keyboard system preferences. It just disappeared. POOF. Thankfully my .mac account includes Backup which I quickly made use of last night.

Thanks quiksan, you'll be on my Option B priority list. Just below the government =)
 
My new 17" Powerbook 1.67MHz is experiencing a similar symptom. It occurs under MacOS X 10.3.7 and 10.3.8. The cursor freezes when not in use. When I continuously move my finger over the trackpad (in circles), the cursor starts to move in 5-10 seconds. When typing, the cursor will disappear as normal. Sometimes, when I try to move the cursor after typing, it takes 5-10 seconds for the cursor to reappear. The clock continues to run and moving the arrow keys does move the cursor. I've noticed this behavior on Safari and on Eudora (and maybe other programs). It sometimes happens when I close a window.
 
Do you guys have Bluetooth enabled when this happens?
Ie try to see if removing all USB and other external devices, and disabling BT would make any difference in the behavior.
 
I have Bluetooth off. I also have WiFi off. No peripherals connected. The Apple second-level support person asked if placing my hand over and touching the whole trackpad wakes up the mouse. In fact, it does.
 
I just bought a 15'' 1.5 ghz powerbook and i left my computer on for a couple of hours and came back to see that the trackpad was responding very slowly. There's some issue with apple as they know about the problem and working on fixing it (see apple powerbook support page, it's one of the most prominent links on the homepage)
 
This reminds me of something similar that happens to my external monitor.
My built in monitor would stay black after waking up.
I found out that after sleep, the comp didn't see what port it has to receive input on or send output to, because it had changed.
If you change input or output devices while sleeping, in some situations the compy might not recognize that, and still send output or look for input on the port that it used before sleeping.
Letting wake up completely before changing stuff, or letting go to sleep completely, seems to help.

I don't know if this is what is causing your problem, but maybe the trackpad and keyboard are subject to a similar mistake in looking for ports.
 
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